July/August 2010
Pieces of the Truth
By Kellye Whitney 07-21-2010
I’m miffed at the media today. Actually, I’ve been miffed at the media for quite a while. It’s not a comfortable position for me to be in because I’m a journalist, but the older I get, the more I see how much the media has done to perpetuate racism, sexism and all the other “-isms” we tackle at Diversity Executive.
I understand why it happens. It’s about competition, ratings, advertising sales, viewer interest — all viable concepts that aren’t going away anytime soon. But there is a marked lack of responsibility, of conscience even, that is increasingly unpalatable and could be downright dangerous.
Shirley Sherrod’s situation is a prime example of what I’m talking about. In a clip posted on BigGovernment.com, Sherrod, a former director of rural development in Georgia for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, talked about the first time a white farmer came to her for help in 1986 when she worked for a nonprofit rural farm aid group.
According to AP, “She said the farmer came in acting ‘superior’ to her and she debated how much help to give him.
“I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farmland, and here I was faced with helping a white person save their land,” Sherrod said.
“Initially, she said, ‘I didn't give him the full force of what I could do’ and only gave him enough help to keep his case progressing. Eventually, she said, his situation ‘opened my eyes’ that whites were struggling just like blacks, and helping farmers wasn't so much about race but was ‘about the poor versus those who have.’”
In a roughly three-minute clip posted Monday, her remarks, which were delivered in March at a local NAACP banquet in Georgia, were somehow used as evidence that the NAACP was hypocritical in its recent stance against racist elements of the tea party movement.
Sherrod said her comments were part of a larger story about learning from her mistakes and racial reconciliation, not racism. According to AP, “‘The white farming family that was the subject of the story stood by Sherrod and said she should stay [on the job].’
“‘We probably wouldn't have (our farm) today if it hadn't been for her leading us in the right direction,’ said Eloise Spooner, the wife of farmer Roger Spooner of Iron City, Ga. ‘I wish she could get her job back because she was good to us, I tell you.’”
Taking this woman’s comments out of context, essentially publishing the most sensational piece of a speech, caused many things to happen: A woman lost her job; President Obama has been dragged into a mess for the millionth time since he was elected, because he’s apparently connected to everything race-related in the frickin’ world; and, a piece of sensationalist, dishonest media completely obliterated what was essentially a positive diversity lesson learned.
